This book on Islam has an unusual perspective. It argues that a critically minded examination of Islam can help Christians achieve a deeper appreciation of the unique truths of their own faith. It draws on the author’s personal experiences living in Islamic countries and his fieldwork with persecuted Christian-minority communities, especially in Pakistan, Yemen, Egypt, and Indonesia. It includes the author’s own original translations of Islamic texts in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, as well as primary-source materials in Latin that were written by Christian participants in the Crusades. The author focuses on Muslim interactions with the Christian tradition. He examines and takes issue with the misguided approach of those Christians and Muslims who, in the interests of Christian-Muslim rapprochement, minimize theological differences between the two faiths, especially in the area of Christology. Such attempts at rapport, he writes, do a profound disservice to both religions. Illustrating the Muslim view of Christ with Islamic polemical texts from the eleventh to the twenty-first centuries, the author draws on Hans Urs von Balthasar, and other theologians of kenotic Christology, to show how Islamic condemnations of divine "weakness" and "neediness" can deepen our appreciation of what is most uniquely Christian in our vision of Jesus as God-made-man, who voluntarily experiences weakness, suffering, and death in solidarity with all human beings. Both timely and urgently needed, The Crucifix on Mecca's Front Porch invites readers to reflect on the stark differences between Christianity and Islam and to appreciate the uniqueness of the Christian faith.
At his typewriter in little Cross Plains, Texas, Robert E. Howard created big characters--Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, Conan the Barbarian--who shaped the art of fantasy fiction for generations. But Howard would never know it. On June 11, 1936, at the age of thirty, he shot himself outside his country home. Why would he do it, and where could death have taken him? Providence Blue imagines the strange underworld journey of Howard after his suicide, through Texas flatlands, ancient Egyptian ruins, and New England city gutters. Meanwhile, as his girlfriend Novalyne Price investigates what caused the tragedy, she is led to Providence, Rhode Island, home of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, where she makes a terrifying, life-changing discovery. In Providence decades later, aging grad student Joseph Bonaventure struggles to finish his dissertation on Lovecraft. When he and a young librarian, Fay O''Connell, chance upon some of the author''s lost papers, this breakthrough locks both of them in a web of black magic, occult conspiracy, and dark cosmic forces--and ties them intimately to the fate of Robert E. Howard. Alongside a cast of Providence characters, including a local priest and a stray Chihuahua, Joseph and Fay join a supernatural quest for good against evil, heaven against hell, the Lamb of God against the horrors of oblivion. Written in a lean, direct style, with a native''s sense of Rhode Island''s geography and culture, David Pinault''s Providence Blue pushes the fantasy novel into new terrain, bringing the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft into contact with the startling reality of Christian doctrine.
This work comprises a literary comparison of surviving alternative versions of selected narrative-cycles from the "Nights." Pinault draws on the published Arabic editions - especially Bulaq, MacNaghten, and the fourteenth-century Galland text recently edited by Mahdi - as well as unpublished Arabic manuscripts from libraries in France and North Africa. The study demonstrates that significantly different versions have survived of some of the most famous tales from the "Nights." Pinault notes how individual manuscript redactors employed - and sometimes modified - formulaic phrases and traditional narrative topoi in ways consonant with the themes emphasized in particular versions of a tale. He also examines the redactors' modification of earlier sources - Arabic chronicles and Islamic religious treatises, geographers' accounts and medieval legends - for specific narrative goals. Comparison of the narrative structure of diverse story-collection also sheds new light on the relationship of the embedded subordinate-narrative to the overarching frame-tale. All cited passages from the "Nights" and other Arabic story- collections have been fully translated into English.
Horse of Karbala is a study of Muharram rituals and interfaith relations in three locations in India: Ladakh, Darjeeling, and Hyderabad. These rituals commemorate an event of vital importance to Shia Muslims: the seventh-century death of the Imam Husain, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, at the battlefield of Karbala in Iraq. Pinault examines three different forms of ritual commemoration of Husain's death - poetry-recital and self-flagellation in Hyderabad; stick-fighting in Darjeeling; and the 'Horse of Karbala' procession, in which a stallion representing the mount ridden in battle by Husain is made the center of a public parade in Ladakh and other Indian localities. The book looks at how publicly staged rituals serve to mediate communal relations: in Hyderabad and Darjeeling, between Muslim and Hindu populations; in Ladakh, between Muslims and Buddhists. Attention is also given to controversies within Muslim communities over issues related to Muharram such as the belief in intercession by the Karbala Martyrs on behalf of individual believers.
This book describes what Shiism means to those who actually practice it and serves as both an excellent introduction to the subject and an original work of scholarship.
This book describes what Shiism means to those who actually practice it and serves as both an excellent introduction to the subject and an original work of scholarship.
At his typewriter in little Cross Plains, Texas, Robert E. Howard created big characters—Bran Mak Morn, Solomon Kane, Conan the Barbarian—who shaped the art of fantasy fiction for generations. But Howard would never know it. On June 11, 1936, at the age of thirty, he shot himself outside his country home. Why would he do it, and where could death have taken him? Providence Blue imagines the strange underworld journey of Howard after his suicide, through Texas flatlands, ancient Egyptian ruins, and New England city gutters. Meanwhile, as his girlfriend Novalyne Price investigates what caused the tragedy, she is led to Providence, Rhode Island, home of the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, where she makes a terrifying, life-changing discovery. In Providence decades later, aging grad student Joseph Bonaventure struggles to finish his dissertation on Lovecraft. When he and a young librarian, Fay O''Connell, chance upon some of the author''s lost papers, this breakthrough locks both of them in a web of black magic, occult conspiracy, and dark cosmic forces—and ties them intimately to the fate of Robert E. Howard. Alongside a cast of Providence characters, including a local priest and a stray Chihuahua, Joseph and Fay join a supernatural quest for good against evil, heaven against hell, the Lamb of God against the horrors of oblivion. Written in a lean, direct style, with a native''s sense of Rhode Island''s geography and culture, David Pinault''s Providence Blue pushes the fantasy novel into new terrain, bringing the Cthulhu Mythos of H. P. Lovecraft into contact with the startling reality of Christian doctrine.
A noble family, a legendary painting, a cursed palazzo. When Arnold Clover is recruited by Lizzie Hawker to help her look into her family inheritance, he cannot begin to guess the journey he is about to embark on. Lizzie's mother, an Italian countess, disappeared thirty years ago, presumed dead. Her father has just died and now the family home, a leaning palazzo in Dorsoduro that is full of secrets, has fallen to Lizzie. When her mother vanished so too did a priceless painting of Lucrezia Borgia - but it quickly becomes apparent that Lizzie and Arnold are not the only ones interested in finding it. The search for the lost Lucrezia quickly becomes a race through the secret history of Venice, one with potentially deadly consequences.
This book has been written by an experienced entrepreneur who has built a highly successful online business. He understands the challenges first hand, and gives readers invaluable advice about the how they too can make it big in the digital world." —Luke Johnson, Chairman Risk Capital partners and Financial Times columnist Online business can be a goldmine – or a minefield. David Soskin, former CEO of Cheapflights and Chairman of mySupermarket.co.uk, has faced all the problems thrown up by building a business on the Internet, and solved them. Here, he shows you how to: Convert a brilliant idea into something that actually pays Get the funding you need to expand Build a great team of staff and advisers Keep the cash flowing Go global! Net Profit provides much needed inspiration and reassurance for would-be start ups and established businesses who want to do more online. "I wish this book had been written ten years ago when I first entered the e-commerce industry." —Glenn Fogel, EVP - Corporate Development and International, Priceline.com "David Soskin combines the insightful mind of a top consultant, the hardened vision of a serial entrepreneur, and the practicality of a successful businessman. Read this book!" - Robin Buchanan, Adviser/Board member of multiple companies, previously the Dean and President of London Business School and also the UK Senior Partner of Bain & Company, the leading global consulting firm.
In focusing on the story of Darwin's religious doubts, scholars too often overlook Darwin's positive contribution to the study of religion. J. David Pleins traces Darwin's journey in five steps. He begins with Darwin's global voyage, where his encounter with religious and cultural diversity transformed his understanding of religion. Surprisingly, Darwin wrestles with serious theological questions even as he uncovers the evolutionary layers of religion from savage roots. Next, we follow Darwin as his doubts about traditional biblical religion take root, affecting his career choice and marriage to Emma Wedgwood. Pleins then examines Darwin's secret notebooks as he searches for a materialist theory of religion. Again, other surprises loom as Darwin's reading of Comte's three stages of religion's development actually predate his reading of Malthus. Pleins explores how Darwin applied his discovery to the realm of ethics by formulating an evolutionary view of the "Golden Rule" in his Descent of Man. Finally, he considers Darwin's later reflections on the religion question, as he wrestled with whether his views led to atheism, agnosticism, or a new kind of theism. The Evolving God concludes by looking at some of the current religious debates surrounding Darwin and suggests the need for a deeper appreciation for Darwin as a religious thinker. Though he grew skeptical of traditional Christian dogma, Darwin made key discoveries concerning the role and function of religion as a natural evolutionary phenomenon.
The story of New York’s west side no longer stars the Sharks and the Jets. Instead it’s a story of urban transformation, cultural shifts, and an expanding contemporary art scene. The Chelsea Gallery District has become New York’s most dominant neighborhood for contemporary art, and the streets of the west side are filled with gallery owners, art collectors, and tourists. Developments like the High Line, historical preservation projects like the Gansevoort Market, the Chelsea galleries, and plans for megaprojects like the Hudson Yards Development have redefined what is now being called the “Far West Side” of Manhattan. David Halle and Elisabeth Tiso offer a deep analysis of the transforming district in New York’s New Edge, and the result is a new understanding of how we perceive and interpret culture and the city in New York’s gallery district. From individual interviews with gallery owners to the behind-the-scenes politics of preservation initiatives and megaprojects, the book provides an in-depth account of the developments, obstacles, successes, and failures of the area and the factors that have contributed to them.
Among the men who rose to power in France in 1789, lawyers were heavily represented. To a large extent, they also shaped the evolution of French political culture of the ancien regime. Lawyers and Citizens traces the development of the French legal profession between the reign of Louis XIV and the French Revolution, showing how lawyers influenced, and were influenced by, the period's passionate political and religious conflicts. David Bell analyzes how these key "middling" figures in French society were transformed from the institutional technicians of absolute monarchy into the self-appointed "voices of public opinion", and leaders of opposition political phamphleteering. He describes the birth of an independent legal profession in the late seventeenth century, its alienation from the monarchy under the pressure of religious disputes in the early eighteenth century, and its transformation into a standard-bearer of "enlightened" opinion in the decades before the Revolution. Lawyers and Citizens also illuminates the workings of politics under a theoretically absolute monarchy, and the importance of long-standing constitutional debates for the ideological origins of the Revolution. It also sheds new light on the development of the modern professions, and of the French legal system. Based on extensive primary research, this study will be of interest to historians and legal scholars alike.
This book explains the relationships between physical activity, health and disease, and examines the benefits of exercise in the prevention and treatment of various important conditions. This book offers an examination of the evidence linking levels of physical activity with disease and mortality.
Madhyamaka, the "philosophy of the middle," systematized the Buddha's fundamental teaching on no-self with its profound non-essentialist reading of reality. Founded in India by Nagarjuna in about the second century CE, Madhyamaka philosophy went on to become the dominant strain of Buddhist thought in Tibet and exerted a profound influence on all the cultures of East Asia. Within the extensive Western scholarship inspired by this school of thought, David Seyfort Ruegg's work is unparalleled in its incisiveness, diligence, and scope. The Buddhist Philosophy of the Middle brings together Ruegg's greatest essays on Madhyamaka, expert writings which have and will continue to contribute to our progressing understanding of this rich tradition.
The Fashion Handbook is the indispensable guide to the fashion industry. It explores the varied and diverse aspects of the business, bringing together critical concepts with practical information about the industry’s structure and core skills, as well as offering advice on real working practices and providing information about careers and training. Tracing the development of the fashion industry, this book looks at how fashion can be understood from both social and cultural perspectives. Each chapter contributes to the knowledge of a particular academic or vocational area either through building on existing research or through the dissemination of new research undertaken into specialist vocational disciplines. The Fashion Handbook uses case studies, interviews and profiles and includes chapters written by recognised academics and fashion industry experts. Specialist topics include fashion culture, luxury brands, fashion journalism, fashion buying, design and manufacturing, retailing, PR and styling. The Fashion Handbook includes: a unique and wide overview of the fashion industry chapters on specialist topics contributions from recognised experts in both academia and the fashion industry expert advice on careers in fashion retailing. A must for all students of the fashion world.
This is the ideal companion for those needing guidance when carrying out a research project in a management or a business-related subject. The text is succinct and concise, written with modular courses in mind for the reader to quickly gain an overall perspective of the fundamental areas and identify the key points that need to be addressed. This clear and practical book also covers the requirements of more general areas of business research and consultancy. New to this edition is a chapter devoted to the analysis of qualitative data - an area many students find they want to focus on. A new accompanying student website also gives practical guidance on some of the problems students face: assistance with writing a research proposal; the structure of a dissertation; collecting data - how much is enough; citing references; links to other resources. Dissertations and projects form an integral part of many MBA and degree programmes and this text is invaluable when tackling this area for the first time. The authors approach the research task in a step-by-step manner, covering areas such as data collection, observational methods, and data analysis.
This is the first book on the subject that combines contemporary marketing theory with analysis of operational marketing practice within the fashion industry. It contains the views of key practitioners and much original case study material from leading fashion organizations to provide unique insights into the reality of fashion marketing.
In Anatolian Verbal Stem Formation, David Sasseville provides a full analysis of the Luwian, Lycian and Lydian verbal stem classes and their pre-history in relation to Hittite.
This book is a “scientific” introduction to management consulting that covers elementary and more advanced concepts, such as strategy and client-relationship. It discusses the emerging role of information technologies in consulting activities and introduces the essential tools in data science, assuming no technical background. Drawing on extensive literature reviews with more than 200 peer reviewed articles, reports, books and surveys referenced, this book has at least four objectives: to be scientific, modern, complete and concise. An interactive version of some sections (industry snapshots, method toolbox) is freely accessible at econsultingdata.com.
This textbook provides authoritative and up-to-date coverage of the classification, causes, treatment and prevention of psychological disorders in children.
Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism brings together ten innovative contributions by outstanding scholars working across a wide array of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. Interdisciplinary in its methodology and compass, with a strong comparative European dimension, the volume examines discourses ranging from literature, historiography, music and opera to anthropology and political philosophy. It makes an original contribution to the study of 18th-century ideas of universal peace, progress and wealth as the foundation of future debates on cosmopolitanism. At the same time, it analyses examples of counter-reaction to these ideas and discusses the relevance of the Enlightenment for subsequent polemics on cosmopolitanism, including 21st-century debates in sociology, politics and legal theory.
The story of Steve Schwarzman, Blackstone, and a financial revolution, King of Capital is the greatest untold success story on Wall Street. In King of Capital, David Carey and John Morris show how Blackstone (and other private equity firms) transformed themselves from gamblers, hostile-takeover artists, and ‘barbarians at the gate’ into disciplined, risk-conscious investors while the financial establishment—banks and investment bankers such as Citigroup, Bear Stearns, Lehman, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley—were recklessly assuming risks, leveraging up to astronomical levels and driving the economy to the brink of disaster. Now, not only have Blackstone and a small coterie of competitors wrested control of corporations around the globe, but they have emerged as a major force on Wall Street, challenging the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley for dominance. Insightful and hard-hitting, filled with never-before-revealed details about the workings of a heretofore secretive company that was the personal fiefdom of Schwarzman and Peter Peterson, King of Capital shows how Blackstone and private equity will drive the economy and provide a model for how financing will work in the years to come.
Reframing long-held assumptions about what distinguishes fine from decorative art, this innovative study explores a mode of making, seeing, and thinking that slices across eighteenth-century visual culture. This book provides a new way of thinking about eighteenth-century French art and visual culture by prioritizing production over reception. Abandoning the ideologically driven discourse that distinguished fine from decorative art between the 1690s and 1770s, The Mobile Image reveals how the two have been inextricably bound from the earliest stages of artistic instruction through the daily life of painters’ workshops. In this study, author David Pullins defines artisanal and artistic means of learning, seeing, and making through a system of “mobile images”: motifs that were effectively engineered for mobility and designed never to be definitive, always awaiting replication and circulation. He examines the careers of Antoine Watteau, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, and François Boucher, situating them against a much broader cast of actors—such as printmakers, publishers, anonymous studio assistants, and architects, among others—to place eighteenth-century painting within a wider context of media and making.
This is the first complete, critical English translation of the Cakrasamvara Tantra, also known as the Sriherukabhidhana and Laghusamvara. This is the first complete, critical English translation of the Cakrasamvara Tantra. Composed in India during the eighth century, it is a foundational scripture of one of the most important Indian Buddhist tantric traditions. The translator’s introductory essay provides an analysis of the historical and intellectual contexts in which the Cakrasamvara Tantra was composed. The heavily annotated translation was made on the basis of the surviving Sanskrit manuscripts of the tantra and its commentaries, parallel passages in related explanatory tantras (vyakhyatantra), two different Tibetan translations of the root text, and several Tibetan commentaries. Includes a trilingual glossary and index. The author has also translated the commentary on this tantra by the great Tibetan scholar Tsong Khapa (1357–1419), Illumination of the Hidden Meaning, now published in two companion volumes. Taken together, these three volumes provide the reader with the first full study in English of this pivotal tantra. Composed in India during the late eighth or early ninth century, the Cakrasamvara Tantra is a foundational scripture of one of the most important Indian Buddhist tantric traditions, as evidenced by the vast number of commentaries and ritual literature associated with it. Along with the Hevajra Tantra, it is one of the earliest and most influential of the yogini tantras, a genre of tantric Buddhist scripture that emphasizes female deities, particularly the often fiercely depicted yoginis and ?akinis.
The gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-Occupied Paris. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. But while trying to solve the many mysteries of the case, Massu would unravel a plot of unspeakable deviousness. The main suspect, Dr. Marcel Petiot, was a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. Petiot's trial quickly became a circus. Attempting to try all twenty-seven cases at once, the prosecution stumbled in its marathon cross-examinations, and Petiot, enjoying the spotlight, responded with astonishing ease. Soon, despite a team of prosecuting attorneys, dozens of witnesses, and over one ton of evidence, Petiot’s brilliance and wit threatened to win the day. Drawing extensively on many new sources, including the massive, classified French police file on Dr. Petiot, Death in the City of Light is a brilliant evocation of Nazi-Occupied Paris and a harrowing exploration of murder, betrayal, and evil of staggering proportions.
How far did colonialism transform north Indian art music? In the period between the Mughal empire and the British Raj, did the political landscape bleed into aesthetics, music, dance, and poetry? The Scattered Court presents a new history of how Hindustani court music responded to the political transitions of the nineteenth century. Examining musical culture through a diverse and multilingual archive, primarily using sources in Urdu, Bengali, and Hindi that have not been translated or critically examined before, challenges our assumptions about the period. The book presents a longer history of interactions between northern India and Bengal, with a core focus on the two courts of Wajid Ali Shah (1822-1887), the last ruler of the kingdom of Awadh. Wajid Ali Shah was one of the most colorful and controversial characters of the nineteenth century and has had a polarizing legacy. According to political histories and popular memory, he was a failure of a king, who was forced to surrender his kingdom to the East India Company, on the eve of the Indian Uprising of 1857. On the other hand, in musical histories, he is remembered either as a decadent aesthete or a path-breaking genius. The Scattered Court excavates the place of music in his court in Lucknow and his court-in-exile at Matiyaburj, Calcutta (1856-1887). The book charts the movement of musicians and dancers between these courts, as well as the transregional circulation of intellectual traditions and musical genres, and demonstrates the importance of the exile period for the rise of Calcutta as a celebrated center of Hindustani classical music. Since Lucknow is associated with late Mughal or Nawabi society, and Calcutta with colonial modernity, examining the relationship between the two cities sheds light on forms of continuity and transition over the nineteenth century, as artists and their patrons navigated political ruptures and social transformations. The Scattered Court challenges the existing historiography of Hindustani music and Indian culture under colonialism, by arguing that our focus on Anglophone sources and modernizing impulses has directed us away from the aesthetic subtleties, historical continuities, and emotional dimensions of nineteenth-century music"--
This examination concentrates on the beginnings of Neoclassicism and explores the philosophical and scientific underpinnings of the Enlightenment, in which Pajou played an important part.
This book presents a detailed account of authenticity in the visual arts from the Paleolithic to the postmodern. The restoration of works of art can alter the perception of authenticity and may result in the creation of fakes and forgeries. These interactions set the stage for the subject of this book, which initially examines the conservation perspective, then continues with a detailed discussion of notions of authenticity and philosophical background. There is a disputed territory between those who view the present-day cult of authenticity as fundamentally flawed and those who have analyzed its impact upon different cultural milieus, operating across performative, contested, and fragmented ground. The book discusses several case studies where the ideas of conceptual authenticity, aesthetic authenticity, and material authenticity can be incorporated into an informative discourse about art from the ancient to the contemporary, illuminating concerns relating to restoration and art forgery.
Philosophy in the Ancient World: An Introduction_an intellectual history of the ancient world from the eighth century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E., from Homer to Boethius_describes and evaluates ancient thought in its cultural setting, showing how it affected and was affected by that setting. The greatest philosophers (Parmenides, Plato, Aristotle, Augustine) and cultural figures (Homer, Euripides, Thucydides, Archimedes) and a number of lesser ones (Hesiod, Posidonius, Basil) receive careful description and evaluation. Philosophy in the Ancient World is ideally suited as a supplement for undergraduate courses in Ancient Philosophy and the History of Philosophy in the West.
Thank you for visiting our website. Would you like to provide feedback on how we could improve your experience?
This site does not use any third party cookies with one exception — it uses cookies from Google to deliver its services and to analyze traffic.Learn More.